


The House in the October Country

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Halloween, Hansel and Gretel - Freeform, M/M, Off-screen Animal Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 21:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Once upon a time, in a house on the edge of the October Country, there lived two brothers. Garrett was the elder, Will was the younger, and they lived there with Garrett’s daughter, Abigail, and five lean dogs of wolfish blood.





	The House in the October Country

Once upon a time, in a house on the edge of the October Country, there lived two brothers. Garrett was the elder, Will was the younger, and they lived there with Garrett’s daughter, Abigail, and five lean dogs of wolfish blood.

In those days it was terrible luck to be born one of three brothers. Garrett had a grey, belly-pinched look to him that gave him a wicked eye and a thin, crooked mouth. Will had eyes like pyre smoke, and skin as moon-pale as a chicken stripped of feathers.

The third brother, the youngest, was the king. This is how it must always be; when three brothers set out to seek their fortunes, the elder must fail first, and then the younger, and the youngest comes last of all, and prevails. It was this, in part, that embittered Garrett’s heart. He was the eldest, and thus, must always be first to fail.

At the end of his quest the youngest brother took half of the kingdom for his own, and the hand of the fair princess, and when her father fell in battle he took the crown as well. He offered no portion of his kingdom to his brothers, and Will, who had expected no such favors, was content to live out his days with no fortune to his name.

Garrett was not such a man. Time after time he would venture into the dark forest, sometimes into the October Country, and bring back game to keep Will and Abigail fed. Will was a fisherman who did not stray beyond the black October gates, and for this, Garrett would ridicule him. “There is such a world, beyond those gates,” he would say. “We might yet seek our fortunes there. Such a world, indeed.”

He would bring home many strange and repulsive corpses, which disturbed Will, and instilled in him a dark fascination with the ugly things of the woods. Often he would lie awake, listening for the howl of Garrett’s gun, and when Garrett returned he would inevitably bring a bloodied body with him. A nine-point stag whose antlers burned for days. A bear with blood that glowed with cancerous light. Once he brought home a spider-eyed lamb, eight gleaming red pinpricks spreading across its soft, white face.

Between Garrett’s hunting and Will’s fishing they ate well and lived happily for many years.

That was in the good days, before the dragon. For you see, little one, one day it came to pass that a red dragon descended upon the kingdom, and began to burn and devour all that lay before it. This was in high autumn, when the leaves were beginning to turn, and food was growing scarce.

The red dragon did not come from the October Country. It had come down from the distant North, where it had lain curled beneath a mountain, and Will, Garrett, and Abigail did not see a single scale of it, nor a wing, nor a lick of flame. This did not mean that they did not feel its shadow.

In time, soldiers came through the village on their way to make war with the red dragon. You may know of them, best beloved, for you have heard their names in other stories. There was Saint Katherine, of the honeyed tongue, and Tobias the Bard, and Lawrence Wells, who had killed for twenty years and would kill for twenty more. There were others among them; Matthew, whom they call the Hawk, and Sir Ingram, and Eldon, the warlock from the Under-Places. All of them passed through the village, and more besides, but this story does not concern them.

As they passed they left a wake of destruction. They took the cows, and the chickens, and the cabbages. They burned the houses to warm themselves. They were hungry, and scared, and desirous of company. When they were gone, many in the village lamented that the red dragon had not burned the village down before the soldiers had ever come to it.

One house alone had been spared. It was gated shut and situated high upon a hill, such that it could be seen from any direction. This was the house of Mason Verger. The pig farmer.

The wealthiest man in town.

 

In time, the village began to starve.

The river dried up, and the game began to disappear. Eventually they were forced to eat the dogs one by one, leaving nothing but their teeth and tails. Will grew hungrier by the day. Sharp pains in his stomach kept him awake for hours.

The shrill, cold wind that blew every night tasted of ash and burning meat, coaxing Will out into the midnight air. Often he would find Garrett pacing the porch, the boards creaking beneath his boots. “We are starving,” he would say, on occasions such as this. “There is nothing to kill, and the fish aren’t biting. The crops are all burned or stolen.”

“What would you have me do?” Will would sigh, leaning on the doorframe. His voice was soft and measured, careful not to wake Abigail.

Garrett rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. He turned his face to the moon like a wolf seeking God. “The pig farmer,” he said. “The pig farmer on the hill. He never goes hungry. We might ask him to pity us.”

He spat the word out like the pit of a peach. Will shook his head. “Hunger is making you rude, Garrett. We have nothing the pig farmer wants.”

“I have my daughter. He has wanted her since her birth.”

“That,” said Will, “is offensive to me, and I will not think of it.”

“Then you must come up with something,” Garrett said sharply. He turned to Will in the moonlight and spread his arms wide. “We cannot feed three mouths, Will. It will not be October forever.”

“I know,” said Will. “But I will not give my niece to the pig farmer, no matter how slowly I starve.”

“What, then?” said Garrett. “What, little brother, will we do?”

 

Will knelt by the door, with the autumn wind at his back, and tucked Abigail into her mittens and coat. “Don’t worry,” he said, staring at the wall to the left of her head. “Your father knows the forest better than he knows the village, and he will not take you as far as the October Country. Promise me you will do whatever he says.”

Garrett was standing behind him, in the threshold of the door. Will could see the shadow of his gun stretched out across the floor.

“I promise,” said Abigail, who was very, very small. Will nodded, kissed her forehead, and sent her on her way.

The door closed behind them, and Will, still kneeling, slumped to the ground and pressed his back against it. “Forgive us,” he whispered, to the king, to the dragon, to anyone. “Forgive us, please. God.”

It took two hours for Garrett to return. He came alone.

 

The next morning found Will in the kitchen, his eyes red-rimmed and his mouth shut tight. The last of the bacon was popping and sizzling over the fire, and Garrett did not take his eyes off it as he spoke to Will.

“We’ve done the right thing, little brother.”

Will said nothing. He knew the truth, that it is a monstrous thing for a parent to abandon their child. Will had grown to love Abigail like his own daughter. Know that neither I nor your father will ever abandon you, little one. No, not even if we were starving.

The day that followed was terribly bleak, and if they’d had any barleywine left in the cellar, Will would surely have drunk himself sick on it. By what should have been lunchtime he was pale and trembling, and looked more ghoulish than was usual. By what should have been dinnertime, his trembling had ceased, and he sat in a dark corner with his arms crossed and his head bowed, thinking.

By nightfall, there came a knock at the door.

Will rushed to the door and threw it wide, and who do you suppose was there, standing on the porch?

It was Abigail herself! She had lost her mittens and coat, and her bootlaces had come undone. Her skin looked terribly raw in the cold night air.

“Abigail!” Will cried rapturously, catching her up his his arms and spinning her about the kitchen. “Abigail! You came back! You found your way back!”

Her arms were tight around his neck as she pressed her face against his shoulder. She was smiling wide enough to hurt her cheeks. “I laid a trail, Uncle! I followed it back home!”

Behind them, unbeknownst to either, stood Garrett. He wasn’t smiling.

“Abigail,” said Will, giving her a kiss on the forehead, “I swear by my right hand, that we will never leave you alone in the forest again.”

This, of course, was a lie.

 

They lived together in that house for a week or more. They said nothing about that night. It was not mentioned, nor was it discussed. But Abigail remembered.

One night, Will knelt before her and wrapped her in mittens and a coat.

“Don’t worry,” he said. He didn’t look at her.

 

Three days passed, and still she did not return.

“You make me sick,” said Garret Jacob, leaning on the railing. “Quit your sorry, sullen skulking. You’re of two minds, Will. No one can ever tell what you’re thinking. Me, I am what I am. Everyone knows it. You are just mirrors within mirrors.”

“Do not lecture me about mirrors,” said Will bitterly. “You are a murderer.”

“If we had not done it, she would have murdered us all! Three mouths we can’t feed, but two . . . two is a start. And it wasn’t I that killed her,” Garrett added sharply. “I took her into the forest on your request. I would have given her to the pig farmer.”

“That would have been worse.”

“So you say.”

“She should have been back by now. If she laid a trail again, clever as she is, she would have been back.”

“Perhaps she passed through the gates of the October Country, and we shall never see her again.”

This thought was more than Will could bear, for if the girl perished out in the forest, at least her soul would be carried up to heaven. For a girl who dies in the October Country, there is no such promise.

So Will took his coat, and his boots, and Garrett’s hunting knife, and set out into the ruinous October. Garrett watched him go, and did nothing to dissuade him.

 

The woods were dark, and deep, and quiet. If Abigail left a trail, Will did not find it.

Garrett was better at forests. He was familiar with the movements of the trees, and the uneven places in the earth. He could walk silently among the dead leaves, and could creep through the brush like a fox, undiscovered. Will was not so cautious with his steps.

The farther he walked, the more oppressive the silence became. He heard nothing but his own footsteps. He could no longer hear the sound of the river that had so often given him fish. He could hear no birds, no beasts. Not even the wind.

 _Surely,_ he thought, _I must have come to the gates of the October Country by now_.

Yet the woods stayed the same. Tall, dark trees, bare but for the occasionally ratty clump of orange and red leaves. They put Will in mind of the tattered clumps of skin and hair that Garrett would wear slung around his waist when he went hunting. Scalps of creatures long dead. Will walked on.

“Abigail?” he said, after a while. “Your father is very worried about you.”

There came no reply. Will felt, for reasons he could not quite define, that he did not dare yell.

In time, he came down to an open place in the forest, where the moon shone brightly and no living thing stirred the leaves. There he found a cottage.

And what a cottage it was, best beloved. It was made entirely of hard, dry gingerbread, and barley sugar glass windows inlaid in white icing and candied walnuts. Powdered sugar dusted the eaves like the first snow of winter, and the smell of mincemeat and rum rolled from the chocolate chimney in a cloud of black smoke.

Remember, Will was mad with hunger. He would have done anything to slake it.

Well settled his weight and walked silently, as he had seen Garrett do. He approached the cottage with all the eager cautiousness of a stag that smells a trap, and when he had come close enough, he darted out his hand and snapped off a piece of the marzipan shingles. Here and there, bits had already been broken off, as though some small, hungry thing had been nibbling at it too.

That first bite . . . Little one, I pray you never know the joy of the first bite of food after long days of starvation. That first bite went to his head first, then his heart, and only then to his belly. He had not felt full in a while.

It was then that Will heard an eager scratching at the inside of the cottage door. Not for nothing had he raised five wolfish dogs; he knew the sound of their nails. Hastily, Will shoved the remaining marzipan into the pocket of his tattered coat, but before he dared flee, the door was flung open wide.

What do you suppose crawled out, my dear?

No, it was not a dog.

Or rather, it was not a dog as you or I know them. Rather, it was a boy. No older than Abigail, certainly, but with scarred skin and horribly dirty hair. He scampered, quick as never-you-mind, out into the clearing and began to tussle in the leaves, snarling most frightfully and fixing Will with his terrible, wolfish eyes. He wore a collar around his neck, and nothing else. He looked quite mad.

Will began to back away, his hands outstretched in case the boy should jump at him. From within the cottage, a quiet, amused voice said, “There now, Randall. You’ll frighten him.”

Will saw that the owner of the voice had followed Randall to the door, and now stood on the threshold, preceded by a long and ugly shadow cast out before him by the flickering firelight within the house. That shadow belonged to some great and hulking thing with a brace of antlers, but the creature who cast it seemed to be only a man, tall and gray-haired, who looked at Will with an expression of polite interest.

The arrival of these two apparitions made readily apparent to Will what I’m sure you have already guessed; he had indeed strayed too far into the dark, and left the gates of the October Country behind him.

“Come inside,” said the thing pretending to be a man. He whistled, and tapped his thigh, and the boy pretending to be a dog crawled to him and licked his hand. “You look famished.”

 

There was only one room in that cottage. The far end was taken up entirely by a large, wide oven with a metal door like a mouth, warming the whole room and stealing the autumn chill from Will’s bones. In the center of the room stood a long chocolate table under a cloth, laden with every kind of good thing. Pecan pie dripping in melted cream and chocolate shavings. Pumpkin-shaped cookies iced in orange and white. Caramel cheesecake stuffed with peanuts.

I think Will went a little mad at the sight of it. He certainly did not walk out of that cottage the same man who walked in.

“There is no meat today,” said his host, as Will, shaking, picked up an orange and began to peel it. “I am old, and my strength is not what it was. These days I cannot go out to catch the wild creatures of the forest; I must bait a snare, and lie in wait for them to approach it.”

The orange peel came apart in Will’s hand like paper. He split the orange into quarters with his fingers and ate all four pieces, one after the other. It did not taste tart like an orange, but as sickly sweet as orange soda. “I cannot stay long,” he said, only after the last piece was gone. “I am looking for someone.”

“We are all looking for someone.”

“Tell me your name.”

“I am Hannibal. Only that, and no more. And now you owe me yours.”

“I know better than to give you my name.”

Hannibal’s eyes grew dark. He sat down at the table, and Will took this as an invitation to sit as well. He reached across, (with no thought to his table manners,) and began to fill his hands with toasted pumpkin seeds, and hard, round gobstoppers.

“. . . Those creatures I do catch are far too lean,” Hannibal said, as he watched Will eat his fill. “It takes a great deal of time to fatten them up.”

“I would not have the patience,” said Will. “I would eat anything, no matter how lean.”

He felt something nudge against his leg. Will looked down and found Randall there, looking belly-pinched and tired. His eyes were terribly black. He looked ill.

“You have eaten your dogs,” said Hannibal, very quietly. “I have a most particular sense for these things.”

“I had no choice,” Will repeated, only half aware of what he was saying. He offered the boy a sour purple gummy worm. Randall ate it from his hand with a peculiar delicacy, and only after Will had withdrawn his hand did he tear the gummy into pieces. “We were starving. All three of us.”

“Is this dog an adequate substitute?”

Will leveled his gaze at Hannibal. “This . . . this is a human boy.”

“A boy, yes. He is too thin to eat,” said Hannibal, with great despair. “No matter. The other child will fatten quickly. She is being well looked-after.”

This was the moment, best beloved, when Will began to suspect. He narrowed his eyes at Hannibal and said, with great suspicion, “Show me this other child.”

Hannibal began to serve out a slice of cinnamon pie. He said nothing.

Will shoved his chair back from the table and lifted the black tablecloth. Randall was on all fours beneath it, stamping his hands against the ground in the manner of dogs at play. Before him, without her mittens and coat, knelt Abigail. She was teasing him with a shard of peanut brittle.

Her eyes, when Will saw them, were quite cloudy. But she smiled as she played with the boy, and paid Will no mind.

Slowly, Will lowered the tablecloth. Hannibal sat as calm as you like on the other side of the table, looking as though he might sit there till cobwebs gathered in his coat-tails, waiting for Will to speak to him.

“Let her go,” Will said. He was not one for words.

“Why?” said Hannibal. He blinked once, as though to express astonishment. “I must have meat for my table, mustn’t I?”

Will thought about this, and thought, and thought. He raised a glass to his lips, expecting wine, and found instead, strawberry syrup. It tasted sweet and honey-thick. The meat of the berries had sifted to the bottom of the glass.

“What would you have me do to get my niece back?” Will asked, watching Hannibal over the rim of his wine glass.

Hannibal set his own glass down. His mouth was red with strawberries. “Why should you think I would have you do anything?”

“I am the second brother of three, Hannibal, and I know how these things are done.”

Hannibal did not smile, but his eyes seemed to glow like coals in the failing light. It put Will in mind of the oven, burning steadily behind its metal door. He felt a sudden urge to turn to it, to hold out his hands and warm them by the hot metal.

“Very well then,” said Hannibal. “I will spare her for one more night, if you will but dine with me again tomorrow.”

And Will, that fool thing, said that he would.

 

On the first night, Hannibal met Will at the door, and seemed to smile at the sight of Will’s clothes. “Have you no finer clothes than these?” he said, as the door shut behind Will’s back.

Will had already approached the table and taken a waffle bowl of hot apple cider in both hands, tipping his head back and draining half of it before he took a breath. “I am a fisherman,” he said coldly, setting the bowl down. The cinnamon sticks rattled with the impact. “My brother is a hunter. No, I have no finer clothes than these.”

“And your other brother?”

“Excuse me?”

“You are the second brother of three, as you have said before.”

“My other brother is the king,” said Will, his voice trailing off in surprised interest. He found that a place at the seat he’d taken the night before had already been set, and a soft cake made from rum and currents had been set before his plate.

“Does that bother you?” asked Hannibal. He sat opposite Will once again, and they both began to eat.

Will shrugged. His knife was plain copper (for iron and silver are forbidden the October Country) and he began to slice the cake into small pieces for the dog.

 _Randall,_ he thought to himself. _That is a child, not a dog._

“I will ask you again,” said Will, through a mouthful of currants. “What would you have me do to get my niece back?”

“You are only her uncle,” Hannibal said. “Should it not be the father who comes to me, asking for such a thing?”

“Her father is the first brother of three. He is destined to fail,” Will said cruelly. “I know this. I have spent years raising his daughter with him, and now she is as much my daughter as his. So I will change my question, and perhaps then you will answer it. What would you have me do to get my daughter back?”

“If I tell you,” said Hannibal, “you will not like the answer.”

“Try me,” said Will.

 

He did not like the answer.

 

Mason Verger lived on a hill high above town. His house was gated shut, and his men patrolled the grounds relentlessly, watching for thieves and wolves. There was no shortage of men who would serve at the Verger estate for a few coppers and the promise of a hot meal.

Will, a fisherman in poor clothes, could not hope to get inside. He did not attempt to. Instead he waited far below in town, in a tavern that stood in the shadow of Verger’s hill. With one sleeve, he wiped the damp off the tarnished glass window of his room. Through the glass he could dimly see Verger’s house high above him, its windows aglow with candlelight. Beneath the floorboards, Will heard the sound of muffled tavern music. It was slow and sad tonight. The fiddle-player was very nearly too hungry to fiddle.

Will lay in wait for a long time, tapping Garrett’s hunting knife against his thigh. Tap, tap, tap. It was not so unreasonable a demand, he thought, for his mind seemed quite divorced from his body, and he felt himself capable of things which he might not previously have considered.

A life for a life. That was not so bad. Hannibal needed meat for his table, after all, and if Will was to snatch Abigail from his open jaws, a fitting sacrifice must be made in her place. _One more night,_ he had said. _I will spare her one more night if you but bring me meat for my table._

As midnight approached, the clouds rolled away from the moon, and Will saw a ghost-pale horse making its way down the winding path to town. It bore a single rider.

Will ducked away from the window and sheathed the knife into his boot.

Mason Verger did not linger in town. He steered his horse away from the lit windows, and the feeble street lamps that illuminated the charred remains of burned houses. He made his way to the forest, and Will followed after, his eyes on Verger’s back.

They went on like that for a great distance, Verger on his horse, and Will following him. When they came to the forest’s edge Verger halted his horse with a fierce tug on its reins and looked around him, wary. This was the first time Will had seen Verger’s face.

Or rather, he saw the mask he wore instead. For you see, little one, the pig farmer was clever. He knew as well as anyone that a mask, worn on an autumn night, will hide your face from the October creatures. The ghouls and goblins will pass you by if you wear a mask, which is why we must never forget to put on our own when we go trick-or-treating.

Verger’s mask was leathery and crude, and covered the whole of his face. The mouth projected outward, curving into a fierce, piggish snout. The eyes were fringed with red paint and tufted fur, and the whole thing looked raw and stitched-together, an ugly adornment for a man otherwise dressed in fine, well-tailored hunting clothes.

“Is there someone following me?” Verger said to the darkness. Then he said, “There is, isn’t there. Come on now, don’t be shy.”

His voice sounded muffled and dry behind his mask. Will steeled his courage, and stepped out of the shadows to face Verger in the moonlight.

“There you are,” said Verger. “I could smell you.”

He dismounted from the horse’s back as smooth as anything. Verger walked across the road, his boots crunching against the dirt, and stood in front of Will without fear.

“You’re that fisherman, right?” he said. The voice, emanating from behind his mask, was chilling in its cheerfulness. Like a child’s voice heard in a place you do not expect a child to be. “You live in the cottage on the edge of the forest, with your brother, and that sweet little girl.”

Will said nothing. Garrett’s knife felt terribly cold where it touched his ankle.

“What are you?” said Verger, tilting his head. “The second son of three? I pity you, sir. No, I do. Nobody thinks about the second son. Me, now, I have a little sister, and our parents are dead. That must make her a witch, or a princess. I’ll give you three guesses.”

He laughed without feeling, as though punctuating his sentence with the noise.

“She is difficult to reign in, truly. Difficult, but not impossible. I have her sweeping the cinders from my fireplaces. When she puts curses on me, or tries to,” and here he snapped his leather-gloved fingers in Will’s face, “it _stinks_ of October. Papa wouldn’t have stood for that. But he’s dead now, and I’m alive, and that big old house with all its fireplaces belongs to me. That’s how I smelled you following me, you know. You reek like my sister’s magic.”

“You like to talk,” Will whispered. His voice was dry from thirst. It seemed like days, weeks, since last he had sat at Hannibal’s table. “You like to hunt in the forest at night. You like little girls.”

“I like a lot of things,” said Mason Verger. He looked up at the moon, or at least, he lifted his masked face in that direction. “I like the forest at night, yes. I like the way the moon makes me feel,” He looked back at Will. The pig mask was expressionless, but Will knew he was smiling. “I like being the only rich man in town. And I like that I will never, ever go hungry.”

“Nor will I,” Will said. “I will never go hungry. Not ever again.”

 

Did he kill Verger?

Yes, my love. He did. But I will not tell you how, for fear it will give you nightmares. You must be up early tomorrow, for your lessons.

What’s that? You want to know how he did it?

. . . He did it with his brother’s knife, of course. Verger’s throat was soft as a rotting apple.

 

Will lingered by the door as Hannibal prepared the body. The whole cottage smelled like thyme and burnt caramel. Abigail and Randall chased each other around the table, happy as birds, and Will looked right through them as though he could not see them.

Hannibal did not eat Verger bloody, as some creatures of the October Country are wont to do. Instead he prepared him carefully, dividing his body into long strips of meat, which he smothered with seasonings and roasted in the large oven at the head of the table. The pig mask lay empty between Will and Hannibal’s plates. The face that it had so recently concealed was rendered into mash and tossed carelessly to the floor, where Randall ate the pieces with great ferocity.

“I thought you said you were a fisherman,” said Hannibal thoughtfully, gazing into the fire, where the meat was beginning to char. “You seem to have the makings of a hunter in you.”

“It is my brother’s influence,” said Will, though he knew it was more than that. It was the October Country itself. It works its way into your bones and reveals your true nature, little one. Will’s true nature, as he was discovering, was that of a hunter.

Abigail ran past him, her bare feet thumping on the cottage floor. Will reached out an arm and caught her around the waist, scooping her up into his arms and bouncing her lightly. She gave a dizzy sort of laugh, but did not seem to truly see him. She struggled to climb down from his arms, to where Randall was waiting for her. If he’d had a tail, he would have been wagging it.

“I’d done what you asked,” said Will. “I brought you meat for your table, bloody and fresh. A life for a life, right? So I need have no more to do with you.”

“You won’t stay a little longer?” asks Hannibal. “The meat is almost ready. Will you go back to your cold cottage, and your colder brother, starving in the darkness and waiting to die?”

And the meat did smell good. Terribly, terribly good.

“I told you I would spare the child one more night, should you bring me meat for my table,” said Hannibal. “I did not say I would let her go.”

“What, then?” Will said angrily, for he was growing impatient. “What else would you have of me? I have already killed a man.”

Hannibal looked at him fondly, and Will felt a wicked sense of unease wash over him. It is a dreadful thing to be looked at fondly by any creature of the October Country, and Will knew that as well as anyone.

“Why,” said Hannibal, “I would have you do it again.”

 

Will walked home in the moonlight. He felt his fear give way to exhaustion with every step.

 _I will never be rid of him,_ he thought.

He knew, in his heart of hearts, that it was so. For he might kill and kill forever, in thrall to the creature in the woods. And every night, when he returned to the gingerbread house, dragging a corpse behind him, Hannibal would say, _one more_. And Will would always come back.

Hopelessness threatened to engulf him. Will looked up at the moon through the trees. “What am I to do?” he asked the moon.

The moon did not answer.

His cottage, when he came to it, looked empty and dark. There were no lights in the windows. Once upon a time, the sound of Will’s approach would’ve brought five wolfish dogs out onto the porch, each one jumping and barking and sniffing.

No dogs on the porch. Not anymore.

In their stead sat Garrett in a chair by the door, as still as death. His gun lay across his lap. It shone in the moonlight. His finger, tapping repetitively against the stock, was the only movement in the forest.

“My dear brother,” he said quietly. “Where have you been running off to?”

Will felt his blood run cold. “I have been hunting.”

“Hunting?” said Garrett. “That’s my job.”

He stood up. His gun hung loosely by his side.

“That’s two nights now that you’ve run off into the woods, and each time you come home with your belly full,” said Garrett. “Have you been dancing with the Devil in the October lands without me?”

“What if I have?” said Will. He spread his arms. “I’m your brother, Garrett. You know me better than anyone. We are of one mind. Where do you think I’ve been going?”

“Show me,” Garrett said, his hand tightening on his gun. “Show me, or I’ll kill you right here, and at least one of us won’t starve."

 

“Be careful where you step,” said Will, in the darkness.

“The October Country is as familiar to me as my own house,” said Garrett.

Will led Garrett through the woods, along the dark and winding way to Hannibal’s cottage. Now and then he would feel the cold touch of Garrett’s gun against his back, but he did not walk faster. There was no rush.

When they found the cottage, the windows were dark. Grape soda trickled down from the gutters to the leaves below. The air smelled of cheesecake and pumpkins.

The doorknob dripped cherry cordial like blood from an open wound. Will turned it.

 

It was dark. The table was empty. An inch of dust lay undisturbed on the floorboards.

The oven door was open. The flames cast flickering shadows along the walls, like tangled black antlers.

“What is this place?” said Garrett through gritted teeth. His eyes were wide and wild, and he had begun to sweat. “Where are we?”

Will took a long, deep breath. “Can you smell that?” he asked. “There’s meat on the fire. It smells like lamb.”

Garrett took a cautious step farther into the room, and then another. Then he turned and pointed his gun at Will’s heart. “Don’t move,” he said. “Not an inch. Not a step.”

Will stepped forward.

“I’m telling you, don’t!” Garrett took one step back, then two. He could smell the fire, spicy and tantalizing. He could almost taste the meat on his tongue. Fresh and bloody and red in the middle. It had been so, so long.

“Go on,” said Will, very quietly. “Take a look. You can smell it, can’t you?”

Garrett shuddered. He shifted his feet uncomfortably.

“Go on, brother. Look.”

 

Garrett looked.

 

You already know what happened next, dear one. I know you do.

 

Will sprang like an animal, his teeth bared in a terrible, silent snarl. He hurled himself against Garrett's back and pushed. Garrett toppled forward with a terrible cry, into the wide, burning mouth of the oven.

Will gripped the door hand and forced the door closed. The hot metal scalded a red stripe across his palm, and his skin bubbled and hissed, but he did not let go until Garrett’s screams had died away.

In the nearby darkness, he heard an intake of breath. “Beautiful,” it whispered. “I could never have hoped for this.”

Will turned, and when he did, he found that the cottage was alive and warm with light. The table was laden with food again, every kind of good thing, and out of the darkness in the corner of the room stepped Hannibal, in all his dark grace and good humor.

Will swallowed. His throat was terribly dry. “What would,” he said, but he could not finish the question. “What would,” and still, nothing, so he sat down heavily at the table and looked at his plate of candy corn and nougat. Dimly, he saw that the door had remained ajar, and Abigail stood silhouetted against the forest outside. Her face was deathly white. Tears had already begun to well in her eyes.

“Papa,” she said, like she had just remembered the word. Then she began to weep in earnest.

Will looked up at Hannibal, and Hannibal looked calmly back at him. “You would still have her?” he asked gently. “After all you have done? After you have killed her father?”

“Yes,” said Will, in defeat. “Yes.”

“Then take her home. You shall have her back, right this very night, and I ask for only one thing in return.”

“Anything. You’ll have it. Anything you wish for.”

“I ask that you come back here, to my house, in a year’s time. Come to me on Halloween night and make no plans to return.”

“Will you eat me, then?” said Will, burying his head in his hands. “Is that to be the end I come to, in this place?”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” Hannibal said kindly. “But that is not for you to know. I only ask that you agree.”

“Then I agree,” said Will. He stood up sharply from the table and took Abigail’s hand firmly in his own. She was crying. He did not notice. “Come here, Abigail. We’re going.”

“Papa,” she whispered, as he dragged her out into the forest. “You killed my Papa. Why did you do it? Can I see Randall again? I want to play with Randall.”

“Your father won’t be coming home anymore,” said Will, as they walked the winding way out of the woods. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe with me, Abigail. Safe.”

 

A year later, he walked into the woods, and he did not come out again.

What happened to him there, best beloved? Well, no one truly knows. Perhaps he was eaten by the goblin that called itself Hannibal. Perhaps he found the cottage empty once again, without food or firelight, and waited for Hannibal there until he starved.

What do I think? Well, as for me, I think they are out there still. Haunting that house like ghosts, and eating all the little children who wander too far into the October Country. But that, I think, is a story for another day. Now, go brush your teeth, and your father will be here to tuck you in presently. No, no, no. No more stories tonight.

Perhaps next Halloween.


End file.
